Does
this even make sense? Doesn’t quantum mechanics involve advanced
esoteric mathematics? Didn’t Richard Feynman say that nobody understands
quantum mechanics, and didn’t Niels Bohr remark that those who aren’t
shocked by quantum mechanics can’t possibly have understood it?Quantum mechanics is our fundamental theory of matter. It has been
confirmed to exquisite levels of accuracy and underlies much of modern
technology: Transistors, microchips, lasers, atomic clocks, the basic
building blocks of computers, televisions, smartphones, CD players,
fiber-optic telecommunications, GPS systems, MRI machines, and more. No
one could say that physicists who exploit quantum mechanics to design
and construct these devices fail to understand the theory.What Feynman and Bohr meant was that quantum mechanics calls into
question our commonsense classical worldview at the most fundamental
level. As Einstein put it, we think of an object as having a
‘being-thus,’ a particular catalogue of definite properties. Objects are
located in space and time. Our actions causally influence the
properties of distant objects only via perturbations that propagate
locally from neighboring region to neighboring region. The most
astonishing and disturbing feature of quantum mechanics is non-locality
as it occurs in the phenomenon of quantum entanglement: Strangely
counter-intuitive correlations between separated quantum systems that
defy causal explanation. Schrodinger called entanglement ‘the
characteristic trait of quantum mechanics, the one that enforces its
entire departure from classical lines of thought.’ The classical
worldview is fundamentally at odds with non-local entanglement.Any educated person should be aware of major advances in science, and
so should have a basic understanding of this extraordinary revolution
in our conceptual framework. You might think that it’s a tall order to
convey the weirdness of quantum correlations to kids, but there’s an
insightful way to do this without the mathematical machinery of the
theory by considering simulation games. In fact, if you don’t already
understand just how quantum mechanics conflicts with our classical
worldview, you will by the end of this article.Consider an imaginary ‘superquantum’ correlation, proposed in 1994 by
Sandu Popescu and Popescu Rohrlich – an extreme but possible version of
the correlations that do occur in our quantum world. Popescu and
Rohrlich imagine a box with two inputs, a left input and a right input,
and two corresponding outputs. Inputs and outputs can each be 0 or 1,
and the two possible outputs occur with equal probability for either
input. The box functions in such a way that whenever both inputs are 1,
the outputs are different, but for the other three combinations of
inputs – both inputs 0, or left input 0 and right input 1, or left input
1 and right input 0 – the outputs are the same. Finally, Popescu and
Rohrlich suppose that the two halves of the box can be separated by any
distance without altering the correlation.The
Popescu-Rohrlich correlation contains all the conceptual mysteries of
quantum entanglement. There’s no way you could rig a real box with some
sort of mechanism to produce this correlation, but it’s quite possible
for a pair of coins, say, to produce the correlation just by chance for a
long run of tosses, where the inputs correspond to a coin being tossed
heads up or tails up, and outputs correspond to a coin landing heads or
tails, with heads and tails corresponding to 0 and 1. Of course, the
longer the run, the more improbable the correlation would be, but it’s
not impossible.Suppose Alice and Bob play a game with a moderator where the goal is
to simulate this correlation. Alice and Bob are allowed to discuss
strategy before the start of the simulation game, but once the game
begins they are separated (say in two soundproof booths) and can only
communicate with the moderator. The moderator gives Alice and Bob each a
0 or a 1 chosen randomly as input at each round of the game, and they
each respond with a 0 or a 1 as output. They win the round if inputs and
outputs are correlated like the correlations of a Popescu-Rohrlich box.Read more...

Amazon writes, "What on earth do bananas have to do with quantum mechanics? From a
modern perspective, quantum mechanics is about strangely
counterintuitive correlations between separated systems, which can be
exploited in feats like quantum teleportation, unbreakable cryptographic
schemes, and computers with enormously enhanced computing power."

Sunday, March 06, 2016

"There’s no doubt that Bill Nye “the Science Guy” is extremely
intelligent. But it seems that, when it comes to philosophy, he’s
completely in the dark." reportsOlivia Goldhill, Weekend writer.

He's an expert on science—but not philosophy.(Reuters/ Andrew Kelly)

The beloved American science educator and TV
personality posted a video last week where he responded to a question
from a philosophy undergradabout whether philosophy is a “meaningless topic.”

The video, which made the entire US philosophy
community collectively choke on its morning espresso, is hard to watch,
because most of Nye’s statements are wrong. Not just kinda wrong, but
deeply, ludicrously wrong. He merges together questions of consciousness
and reality as though they’re one and the same topic, and completely
misconstrues Descartes’ argument “I think, therefore I am”—to mention
just two of many examples.

And Nye—arguably America’s favorite
“edutainer”—is not the only popular scientist saying “meh” to the entire
centuries-old discipline. Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson has claimed
philosophy is not “a productive contributor to our understanding of the
natural world”; while theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking declared that “philosophy is dead.”

It’s
shocking that such brilliant scientists could be quite so ignorant, but
unfortunately their views on philosophy are not uncommon. Unlike many
other academic subjects (mathematics and history, for example), where
non-experts have some vague sense of the field’s practices, there seems
to be widespread confusion about what philosophy entails.

In Nye’s case, his misconceptions are too large
and many to show why each and every one is flawed. But several of his
comments in the video speak to broader confusions about philosophy. So
let’s clear up some of those:

“It often gets back to this question: What is the nature of consciousness?”

Here is Nye’s full quote, on what he sees as philosophy’s main preoccupations:

“It often gets back to this question:
What is the nature of consciousness? Can we know that we know? Are we
aware that we’re aware? Are we not aware that we’re aware? Is reality
real? Or is reality not real and we’re all living on a ping pong ball
that’s part of a giant interplanetary ping pong game that we cannot
sense? These are interesting questions.”

Nye’s remarks, which conflate ideas from
completely different areas of philosophy, are a caricature based on the
common misconception that philosophy is about asking pointlessly “deep”
questions, plucking an answer out of thin air, and then drinking some
pinot noir and writing a florid essay.

But ping pong inside, these actually are
interesting questions—and far from idle musing, the methods of
analyzing such topics are incredibly, mind-achingly rigorous. Each of
the questions Nye asks is the subject of extensive study, and
philosophy, at its core, involves highly critical thinking.

“The idea that reality is not real, that what you sense and feel is not authentic, is something I’m very skeptical of.”

Nye’s skepticism
is an empty response to the question of whether we can trust our senses.
“If you drop a hammer on your foot, is it real?” he asks. “Or is it
just your imagination?” Then he goes on to suggest that the young
philosophy student explore the question by dropping a hammer on his own
foot. But such a painful experiment would not actually address
the underlying question, and this approach—simply mocking the argument
rather than addressing it—is so infamous that, as CUNY philosophy
professor Kaikhosrov Irani points out on his blog, it has its own name: argumentum ad lapidem—”appeal to a stone.”

Nye’s confidence that what we sense and feel is
“authentic” is particularly strange coming from a scientist, given that
several advanced scientific discoveries do in fact contradict
information we receive from our senses. Einstein discovered that there’s
no such thing as absolute simultaneity, for example, while quantum
physics shows that an object can be in two places at the same time.
Several philosophers have long argued that our senses are not a reliable
means of evaluating reality, and such scientific discoveries support
the idea that we should treat sensory information with a little
skepticism.Read more...

Would
it not be helpful if someone could apply critical thinking to the subject
itself— weigh the various viewpoints, analyze them, synthesize them, and come up
with a nuanced, informed view?

That
is exactly what Linda B. Nilson, PhD, has done in the online courseInfusing Critical Thinking into Your Courses. In this
content-rich program, Dr. Nilson, founding director of the Office of Teaching
Effectiveness and Innovation at Clemson University, carefully examines the
critical-thinking landscape, reviews the best scholarship, and helps you apply
it to your teaching. She provides:

A clear,
practical definition of critical thinking

A review
of discipline-relevant critical-thinking skills

A
framework for creating meaningful learning outcomes

Techniques
for introducing critical-thinking concepts to students

A process
for advancing students through the stages of critical thinking

Ways to
gauge critical thinking using both objective and stimulus-based assessments

Get
the tools and insights you need to mold your students into proficient critical
thinkers.

"Despite numerous recent developments the road to getting ordinary Cubans online is still a rocky one" according to Jonathan Keane, freelance journalist, living in Ireland, covering business and technology.

Since Cuba ended its diplomatic standoff with the US last year, much has been made of the country’s attempts to catch up with the global internet and get its people online despite the severe lack of services and infrastructure.

Now the Cuban government has made perhaps its biggest move in bringing the internet to the people. It is piloting a broadband internet service in two neighbourhoods in the capital Havana. ETECSA, the government-run telecommunications agency that oversees all matters relating to the internet, confirmed that Chinese telecom and mobile giant Huawei will be running the pilot.

Initially, the scheme will be targeted at homes but businesses will eventually be able to sign-up for the service. However at this early stage, the pilot program has not revealed any details on costs or what kind of speeds will be available.

At the same time there’s no timeline for when the pilot will be completed or what the next stages will be. This is indicative of Cuba’s internet efforts in general.

High costs and slow speedsGetting online in Cuba is notoriously difficult and once you have your connection you’re likely to be stymied by slow speeds, often as low as 1Mbps, and censorship.

Up until this point, only government staff and diplomats could gain access to broadband internet or certain approved businesses like doctors’ practices or hotels to meet tourism demands. Everyone else has had to settle for slow yet expensive services from ETECSA while a year ago the government approved its first public Wi-Fi location at the residence of a local artist affiliated with the government. Then in the summer of 2015, officials approved 35 new paid public Wi-Fi hotspots in the country.

Cubans will be hopeful that the Havana broadband trials will lead to a wider roll out of services. The country is still far behind its neighbouring countries and the developed world in this regard.Accessing the internet through cafes and Wi-Fi zones, as is the case for most people, is still prohibitively expensive. Costs have dropped from $4.50 an hour to $2.00 an hour but that’s still around 10% of the average income.

Government snoopingFreedom House, in its latest 2015 report, lists Cuba as “not free”. The government still has a grip over its citizens’ internet use, as sparse as it may be.

While doctors have access to a slightly better service, they still face the wrath of the government if they overstep their bounds. Last March a number of doctors and dentists had their internet and email services shut down as they had used these connections to post ads on the classifieds site Revolico, a Craigslist-like site that has also been used as black market of sorts and has been blocked by the government from time to time.

There have also been numerous reports over the years of government snooping on emails read through mobile. The local Nauta pre-paid internet access system was extended a couple of years ago to allow the use of email on mobile phones, provided they were .cu email accounts, but these emails aren’t exactly safe from prying eyes.

ETECSA’s authority has a rather open book when it comes to blocking or filtering websites. One government resolution states that the agency can “take the necessary steps to prevent access to sites whose contents are contrary to social interests, ethics and morals, as well as the use of applications that affect the integrity or security of the state.”International websites like BBC are available but restrictions have been placed on sites that are critical of the government. Facebook and Twitter have been periodically blocked as well.

These methods haven’t been applied on a large scale by the government yet, as the lack of technology in the first place has proven to be a tool for censorship in itself. Now that this is changing and people are gaining access to more and more information, albeit slowly, this raises concerns over how ETECSA and the government will conducts itself moving forward, particularly when it comes to online dissent.

Since dialogues were opened with the US, Cuba has pledged to bring the internet to 50% of Cuban homes by 2020. Internet penetration is currently as low as 5% to 10% so achieving this goal is no easy task. The Havana broadband pilots are a step in the right direction but infrastructure remains the biggest hurdle to cross right now.

“There just isn’t infrastructure to support mass access to the internet. Much more residential access is needed to increase internet penetration,” says Doug Madory of Dyn Research, which monitors internet connectivity around the world. He hasn’t noted any hugely significant changes to Cuba’s internet activity since its last report.

The other major infrastructural challenge for Cuba is latency, which will continue to hamper internet speeds.

“To begin to provide an internet experience anywhere close to what is experienced in most countries, content providers including CDNs like Akamai and Google need to able place their caching servers inside Cuba. This would greatly alleviate the load on the submarine cable as traffic begins to increase as more Cubans come online,” says Madory.Read more... Source: IDG Connect

"Times Higher Education World University Rankings data reveal the 20
best institutions based on private-sector investment per academic" reports Ellie Bothwell, International and rankings reporter at Times Higher Education and THE World University Rankings.

Photo: Corbis

Germany’s LMU Munich receives more industry funding per academic than any other institution in the world, according to Times Higher Education’s new Funding for Innovation ranking.The university has topped a list of the world’s best 20 institutions
based on their ability to secure research money from the private sector.
It secured almost $400,000 (£288,500) per academic from businesses in
2013.The US’ Duke University takes second place, with a figure of almost $290,000, while the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)is third, with $254,700.Europe dominates the ranking with nine institutions in the top 20,
followed by Asia with seven and North America with just two. China is
the most-represented nation, with four universities, led by China University of Petroleum (Beijing),
which received $227,600 of industry funding per academic, in seventh.
Germany, South Korea, Turkey, the Netherlands and the US have two
institutions each...The data for the THE Funding for Innovation ranking were extracted from the THE World University Rankings 2015-16. The indicator was defined as “research income from industry and commerce” and does not include public funding for universities.Read more...Source: Times Higher Education

Catch up on the most compelling higher-ed news stories you may have missed this week. Each
Friday, Laura Devaney will be bringing you a recap of some of the most
interesting and thought-provoking news developments that occurred over
the week. I can’t fit all of our news stories here, though, so feel free to visiteCampusNews.com and read up on other news you may have missed.

University tech lab takes on virtual reality
Carolina Cruz-Neira’s visualization technology lab in the Emerging
Analytics Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock is a
playground for the imagination.Read more...

Ohio’s troubled online learning project investigatedThe Ohio inspector general is investigating a troubled joint project
by Ohio State University and the state Board of Higher Education to
create a clearinghouse of online learning materials.Read more...

Ithaca College embarks on solar project
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)
and Ithaca College announced that construction is underway on a 2.9
megawatt (MW) solar electric project that will provide enough
electricity to meet approximately 10 percent of the college’s energy
needs.Read more...

4 steps to launching a CBE program
A pioneer of competency-based education shares the key steps for developing a successful CBE program.Read more...

Tim Hudson, PhD, Senior Director of Curriculum Design, DreamBox Learning writes in the white paper, "One of the most important steps to take when implementing a blended learning model is to critically evaluate digital curricular resources. With the requirement for schools to meet rigorous benchmarks such as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) while classroom sizes are growing and budgets are shrinking, the quality of digital curricula significantly impacts how well it can empower both educators and learners to meet their goals. With new technologies and programs continually being released, how do educators effectively evaluate and select high-quality digital curricula from the vast array of both open-source and proprietary resources?" Whether a
school is building a blended learning program or simply wants to enhance
learning with technology, it is critical to evaluate
the quality of digital learning programs.In this white paper you'll find:

Some of the unique considerations involved in selecting digital resources

The awards honor educators
and administrators who have demonstrated measurable best practices and
innovation in online education. As part of her selection, LeBrun attended Pearson’s online learning conference, Cite 2016, in Amelia Island, Florida.

"Starting Fall 2016, the Master of Arts in educational leadership at The American University in Cairo (AUC) will combine classroom and online instruction, making it the first master’s program at the University to be offered in blended format and giving more flexibility to mid-career professionals who want to pursue a higher education degree." inform Al-Bawaba.

American University of Cairo

“The purpose of blended program delivery is to provide access to
a degree program,” said Ted Purinton, associate professor of
international and comparative education and dean of the Graduate School
of Education. “AUC’s master’s degree programs are designed for
traditional graduate students. If you live too far away or work late in
the evening, you can’t participate in a master’s program. Students in
the blended program will have the option to participate in
online courses so that they don’t have to come to campus a few nights
per week, each week.”

Blended learning is emerging as a global
trend. According to the 2015 New Media Consortium Horizon Report, one in
10 higher education U.S. students were only taking courses online as of
2012, and 13.3 percent were combining online and face-to-face
instruction.

The educational leadership MA degree in the blended
format is no different than the degree currently offered for regular
sessions on campus. “The program has a different schedule of delivery,
but it’s the same exact courses, course material and faculty members,”
said Purinton.

The blended program will consist of a cohort of
approximately 15 students who will participate in online activities and
meet face-to-face on scheduled Saturdays throughout each term. Online
activities include participating in asynchronous online discussions,
pre-recorded video lectures and even collaborative projects by
communicating through Skype or other online platforms.Read more...

Contact me

About Me

Hello, my name is Helge Scherlund and I am the Education Editor and Online Educator of this personal weblog and the founder of eLearning • Computer-Mediated Communication Center.
I have an education in the teaching adults and adult learning from Roskilde University, with Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Human Resource Development (HRD) as specially studied subjects. I am the author of several articles and publications about the use of decision support tools, e-learning and computer-mediated communication. I am a member of The Danish Mathematical Society (DMF), The Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics (DSTS) and an individual member of the European Mathematical Society (EMS). Note: Comments published here are purely my own and do not reflect those of my current or future employers or other organizations.